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glynnenstein posted:To clarify, rifles were used in the Napoleonic era, but they weren't the predominant arm. A goon even has an original specimen! The various Germans loved the loving things, but you are right that they were never predominant. The rifle armed units were smallholders, petit bourgeoise, and foresters that could provide their own arms and were called up essentially on an as-needed basis. Therefore a lot of them owned rifles and were proficient either through hobbies (hunting) or profession (hunting, forestry, land management). You can draw some very high level parallels to English bow-armed yeomanry from medieval times. These units were perceived as relatively intelligent and industrious and based on capability and arms they were used for skirmishing, recon, and light infantry work. In the early Coalition wars, Jaeger rifles were still nonstandard or semistandard (especially compared to the relatively standard smoothbore muskets of the time) and really were not aggressively standardized for any of the German entities until the Prussians went heavy on a standard rifle design after Jena - Auerstadt.
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Dec 8, 2020 16:12
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SeanBeansShako posted:Yeah all types of cavalry rolled with firearms. It would be crazy not too. at min having guns in addition to swords is very useful for intimidating local farmers and stealing their poo poo as well as killing game and whatnot
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Dec 8, 2020 16:13
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feedmegin posted:I mean, I get that, but if your main doctrine is 'charge home with the sabre' Napoleonic-style then you don't need one revolver let alone three, now do you? You're planning to do a lot of shooting. If revolvers had been available to caracole-doers back in the 16th century I'm sure they'd have loved to have them too. Charging home with the sabre usually involves substantial reforming and you should shoot at the other dudes on your way in, so yeah, you should have a pistol. Napoleonic cav carried pistols. Your primary way that you are supposed to be decisive on the battlefield may be the sword but that is not the majority of the work that the cavalryman does. It's almost all picquet, outpost, and recon. Guns are very convenient for this purpose.
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Dec 8, 2020 19:17
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airmobile / heliborne infantry are just straight up dragoons
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Dec 8, 2020 20:58
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early 20th c has lots of good horse action. maybe less Glorious Charges but still some very important stuff, especially if you go eastwards. Russian Civil War, Polish-Soviet war had some good things and of course Xinjiang was a good one for cav.
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Dec 8, 2020 22:56
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zoux posted:The key thing to understand about cavalry tactics in the late middle ages through the napoleonic era is that: the British were bad at it. Except Cromwell and he overthrew the monarchy, for a bit. Arguably Cromwellian horse was OK because it was drawn from non-traditional British Cav sources. The British had good cavalry in the Napoleonic era, it was just German.
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Dec 9, 2020 00:01
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White Coke posted:Would they be facing other cavalry more often while performing picquet, outpost, and recon, or infantry? Infantry also performed picquet and outpost duties, so if you're cavalry on recon (a more active mode) you would encounter both other cavalry and infantry. But it doesn't matter too much. You're there to look at things. If you encounter a small number of infantry you ignore them. If you encounter cav you wave hello to your counterparts and keep your eye on your exits. If you encounter a large number of infantry you use your superior mobility to gently caress off. The advantage of cavalry is mobility and ground coverage for the number of men employed, and ease of communication. Say you have a little village along a fordable river. You can garrison the village with say, a couple of companies of infantry (200 men), and put a small patrol at each ford. However, if an enemy cav patrol shows up they're hosed and your primary mode of warning will be gunfire, which is useless if you don't have patrols in audible contact with each other - so that means a series of static outpost positions and a lot of walking. Or, you could garrison the village with a troop of cavalry (80 men), and have them ride on patrol. If someone comes, they send a rider back to troop commander in the village and keep looking at things. They can cover many times more frontage effectively compared to similar numbers of infantry. The disadvantage if you garrison with cavalry is that if the enemy makes a concerted effort you absolutely are not going to try to hold that village. Infantry can hold ground and needs to be dug out. Cavalry can't hold ground. Most cav work in the Napoleonic wars is extremely important but excruciatingly dull.
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Dec 9, 2020 03:02
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In the Napoleonic era a bunch of British regiments got reclassified as dragoons because dragoons were paid less.
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Dec 9, 2020 17:29
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Abongination posted:On the topic of cavalry, the Aussie government likes to claim the last successful Calvary charge was by the Australian light horse at Beersheba in ww1 The last major one I am aware of (not counting insurgencies and the like) is Izbushensky in 1943. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_of_the_Savoia_Cavalleria_at_Izbushensky
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Dec 9, 2020 17:30
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I'd probably count it as an insurgency but was not aware that the NA used cavalry to charge home - was definitely aware of use in bounding overwatch as mobile infantry. Interesting, thanks!
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Dec 9, 2020 18:17
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putting things on boats has yet to be surpassed for cost and fuel efficiency
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Dec 10, 2020 12:33
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I think even less than countermeasures being developed the biggest problem was you can only use them while moored. As torpedo boats got bigger and hardier, and once submarines were invented, most of the risk was really when you are steaming around, so investing that weight in hull-based devices like bulging was a lot more useful. edit: and of course a lot more time/effort/money was invested in shore defenses of various kinds
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Dec 10, 2020 13:56
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SerthVarnee posted:I'll try to be more specific then: There's kind of an interesting theory, which is basically that the average infantryman's loadout has stayed pretty constant over the millenia. You basically just load the dude up with whatever he can reasonably carry (it increases over time because people get bigger and stronger due to advances in nutrition), and if gear gets lighter, the weight just gets replaced by additional gear. I can't find it but there was a really good slideshow layout of British-based infantry kit through the centuries which included like Roman era, on through to modern.
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Dec 10, 2020 22:19
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Lobster God posted:I think this might be what you're thinking of with the pics of kit through the ages: https://www.thomatkinson.com/inventories yeah thats it, thanks!
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Dec 10, 2020 23:00
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Platystemon posted:How were people not plotting to overthrow the government while toiling on the wall? too tired / it's part of your societal obligations corvee labor tends to not be a cause of revolt edit: also far more supervised by the government than if you are dickin around at home with the boys KYOON GRIFFEY JR fucked around with this message at 14:34 on Dec 11, 2020 |
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Dec 11, 2020 14:22
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people kind of always have a weird conception of fortifications either "working" or "not working" - this came up before in the tower discussion a wall around a city is meant to keep people out and protect your poo poo. a wall along a border is meant to raise the resources required for an enemy to cross it. an enemy may cross the wall but that does not mean the wall was not successful overall.
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Dec 11, 2020 20:52
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also walls delay progress so that you have a chance of responding with a significant force, which also becomes part of the aggressor's calculus
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Dec 11, 2020 23:28
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SeanBeansShako posted:The Nock gun? .46 was a pistol cartridge so it wasn't quite so bad as say, seven .69 barrels but that's kind of semantics - it was deeply unpleasant
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Dec 12, 2020 18:46
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It had a single flintlock so not without wildly reimagining it. You could make a version that was essentially a bunch of separate muskets glued together but I think you are pretty severely limited by the technology of the time since a flintlock doesn't work unless the pan stays roughly on the top facing up. . Later on, once you have cap and ball cartridges, I think it would be doable since multiple hammers connected/disconnected to a trigger pull is a lot easier.
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Dec 12, 2020 19:05
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Alchenar posted:Invasion casualty projections are all speculative, but it seems odd to dismiss the hundreds of thousands-to-millions projection given that the closest reference point is the Battle of Okinawa and we know for a fact the Japanese defence plan was to put a bamboo spear in the hands of every civilian and expect them to die for their Emperor. Those numbers seem entirely plausible. My great aunt was dragooned in to one of those militia units comprised of university students. Training with spears, improvised explosives, and Murata rifles. I'm glad she got to avoid the experience of deploying those "skills" in combat.
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Dec 13, 2020 16:12
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what the gently caress was up with the grip on the FG42, i feel like it was either designed by someone who had never seen a gun before, or someone with a severely deformed shooting hand
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Dec 15, 2020 02:50
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Raenir Salazar posted:e: He does test fire the first pattern FG-42, apparently it's because it was meant to resemble the grip of the mauser rifles and is fairly comfortable when prone, unless I misheard. But so far watching the video he seems to like it as well. it clearly cannot be that good as they replaced after 2400 units
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Dec 15, 2020 14:45
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its not really, plenty of garbage poo poo made production, especially nazi poo poo
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Dec 15, 2020 14:56
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Acebuckeye13 posted:That's not really the best argument, plenty of good equipment had limited production runs - just look at the Jumbo Sherman, which was limited to only 254 tanks. are you seriously trying to argue that a tank production run is at all analogous to a rifle production run in terms of scale or magnitude? i'm not real familiar with why more jumbos weren't produced but i suspect the root causes were somewhat different than "make a new better version"
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Dec 15, 2020 16:42
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if you dont want to write the umlaut just write ae
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Dec 15, 2020 16:52
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Nenonen posted:Are the shoes on display somewhere? if I recall correctly there's a giant statue of a shoe in Tirkit that the town put up in his honor
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Dec 15, 2020 19:48
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press f to pay respects
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Dec 15, 2020 19:58
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poisonpill posted:Why do so many African armies still have huge airborne contingents? Geography? Airborne is also shorthand for elite light infantry at this point and I would imagine that at least for some African armies this is more about differentiation and ensuring loyalty to the regime than actual by-God Airborne operations.
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Dec 16, 2020 16:07
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Pistol_Pete posted:It's from a few pages ago but wow. Reading biographies and histories of the period, I'd noticed how much emphasis was put on 'drill' in the militaries of the time and assumed that it was down to harsh discipline and keeping the soldiers busy. Co-ordinating those sort of intricate manouvers, with thousands of participants, where a fuckup in just one little area could cause fatal delays and confusion and with an enemy army shooting at you the whole time? Ok, now I finally understand why C18 armies spent a lot of time drilling. Don't worry, the stuff you assumed was absolutely part of it.
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Dec 17, 2020 00:11
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People kind of get screwed up on first glance at the DLMs if they don't look at TOE because legere really refers to mobility even though it's commonly translated as light. One of the I think maybe interesting what-ifs is if 1er DLM had not been separated from the Corps de Cavalerie and sent to Brabant just in time to turn around and drive back. This rendered most of its vehicles combat ineffective. It probably doesn't have an overall strategic effect but certainly would have improved French performance in Belgium since the best trained and equipped French division did very little actual fighting.
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Dec 17, 2020 13:55
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SlothfulCobra posted:I guess that's probably plausible considering France's history before and after the war, but was there anything in particular that was causing civil unrest that they were worried about? Or did they just think that some charismatic officer could take hold of the entire army and coup the federal government without needing some wedge to build public support? The French political situation in the Third Republic was incredibly unstable. There was a strong Fascist element during the Third Republic. The 6th February 1934 crisis was widespread right-wing antidemocratic demonstrations and violence. It looked a lot like the precursor to a coup. There were many strikes in 1936 in particular, and the Popular Front's policies were hated by the right and center-right.
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Dec 17, 2020 17:58
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It's probably a more accurate read to say that the Maginot line was built to ensure that the next war with Germany would be fought on Belgian soil rather than French.
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Dec 17, 2020 19:39
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Dance Officer posted:The Maginot line was never considered impenetrable by french command, afaik. No set of fortifications ever is, but if your choices are between the forts or give Belgium another shot, Belgium starts to look a lot better. It was certainly designed to influence German planning. It's very hard to under estimate the effects that fighting almost all of WWI on the Western Front in France had on French strategic thinking based on the strong desire that they NOT fight the rematch on French soil to the degree practicable.
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Dec 17, 2020 19:52
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you want history, memoir, or what?
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Dec 18, 2020 01:42
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You mentioned a separate military for the Grand Dutchy - what was the status of a unit like the Finlandsky Guards Regiment and Guards Rifle Battalion? Part of the Finnnish army, or not? Were the units comprised of ethnic Finns in Russian service?
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Dec 18, 2020 16:10
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Warden posted:Finlandsky Guards were not a Finnish unit. Russia had seized territories during the 18th century that at some point had been under Swedish rule and as a result had people of Finnish origin living there, but they lost their rights and were turned to serfs. Russia later recruited troops from people with Finnish roots there and formed the original Finlandsky Guards in 1806. The unit continued until WW1, and they joined the Bolshevik Revolution in late 1917 and were later incorporated into Red Army. Really interesting, thanks!
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Dec 18, 2020 17:55
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Cav is also useful in reserve (either to exploit or contain a breakthrough) even if you don't plan to fight on horseback because it has much higher operational and tactical mobility.
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Dec 18, 2020 20:34
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oXDemosthenesXo posted:What was a reasonable engagement range for a field gun in the early ACW? About a mile with roundshot for smoothbores. Rifled guns like the 3" were used for counterbattery because they were more accurate and had twice the range.
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Dec 22, 2020 13:51
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Panzeh posted:Vast improvements in industrial steel production technology. Not steel yet, as the Bessemer process had been proven but not operationalized. But there were improvements in metallurgy and processes with cast and wrought iron. The Confederates had a hard time building certain kinds of guns, particularly rifled guns, due to limitations in technology.
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Dec 22, 2020 15:30
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Alchenar posted:The big indicator for the effectiveness of artillery in the ACW is the changes that occurred in infantry tactics: the battlefield column just ceases to be a formation anyone uses. Very very quickly people realise you can't do the Napoleonic thing of marching up to just outside musket range in column and then deploy into line, instead you have to pick a start-line that's safe to form up in, then cross the battlefield in line to present as small a target as possible. This was also a function of the use of rifled muskets. Effective range of a rifled musket is 3-5x that of a smoothbore musket, so you're pushing that musket range bubble out considerably and you become much more vulnerable to flanking movements.
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Dec 22, 2020 15:41
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